No creature is as identified with Earth’s pleasures, gifts, and comforts as is the pig.
No creature is as identified with the Corn Mother as is the pig.
However, as Earth’s pleasures became increasingly suspect, the pig’s reputation sank. Part of this ambivalence toward pigs may stem from the profound role pigs once played in pagan ritual; part may derive from the roots of why pigs played that role: the powerful identification of pigs with Earth’s bounties as well as with fierce, fertile female power.
Pigs were associated with sex, birth, new life, regeneration, fruitfulness, abundance, prosperity, divination, and love. Pigs also epitomize male and female reproductive sexuality. Sows are emblematic of fecundity. In Italy, as well as those areas once dominated by Rome, the word “pig” was used as a nickname for the vulva, similar to the modern usage of “pussy.” Small gold and silver pig-shaped charms were worn as amulets by Roman women to ensure fertility, and cowrie shells were frequently called “pig shells” in Europe, not because of their resemblance to swine but because of their resemblance to the vulva.
Pigs are associated with almost as many deities as are snakes. In fact, the deity whom pigs are most closely identified with today, Demeter, has two sacred creatures: pigs and snakes.
The Eleusinian Mysteries, dedicated to Demeter and her daughter Persephone, was the most significant spiritual ritual in ancient Greece. Its ceremonies were initiated by the sacrifice of a pig.
When Persephone is kidnapped, only two voluntarily assist Demeter: the young swineherd who is the only eye-witness to the abduction (some of his pigs fall into the chasm that opens up to swallow Persephone) and the witch-deity Hecate, whose sacred animals also include snakes and pigs.
The Eleusinian Mysteries were not Demeter’s only sacred rites. She also presided over the Thesmophoria, a women’s annual autumnal mystery whose rituals involved both her sacred creatures, pigs and snakes. Because it was a “mystery” cult festival few details survive, however this much is known: during the ritual, pigs, cakes, and pine branches were thrown into underground chasms (or vaults), which were then covered so that they were contained within Earth. Snakes lived in these grottoes as guardians: they may have consumed much of the offerings. During the next year’s festival, the decayed remains were removed and incorporated into ritual. This ritual may have reproduced Persephone’s descent into the Underworld and her ultimate emergence.
Ceres, the Italian Corn Mother, eventually became profoundly identified with Demeter. Pigs were kept in underground enclosures of her shrines. Those seeking healing dreams were invited to sleep among the pigs. (See below for more information regarding pigs and dreams.) Silver and gold pigs were among Ceres’ votive offerings.
Artemis’ shrines were often decorated with boars’ heads or with their tusks. She famously sent the Calydonian boar to ravage the land as punishment when a king neglected to offer her what she perceived as her share of first fruits of his hunt.
Among the deities depicted as riding pigs are Arduinna, Baba γaga, Demeter, Freya, and Isis. Freya and Baba γaga will eventually come to be explicitly identified as witches.
Cerridwen, the Welsh witch-goddess, is sometimes called “The White Sow.” Pigs are her sacred creatures.
Among Brigid’s many animal familiars is one known as the King of the Swine.
The ancient Celtic deities known as hags are frequently described as having boar’s tusks.
Sometimes Hecate is depicted as having three heads facing in three different directions: although there are variations, a pig is almost inevitably among one of the three creatures. Hecate also occasionally manifests in the form of a black sow, particularly when she is in an aggressive mood.
Ezili Dantor is the Haitian lwa who epitomizes the aggressively independent, self-sufficient mother. Her sacred animal is the black pig, and she is powerfully identified with the small black self-sufficient pigs that once ran wild through Haiti and upon which rural Haitians depended for food and income. Those pigs, like Ezili Dantor, represented economic independence: as demonstration of their economic importance, the same word was used to name these pigs and banks. (In the 1980s, these pigs were eradicated and replaced by higher maintenance white pigs during a United States-sponsored program that remains controversial.)
Pigs, and specifically pig-sties, are also identified with oracular powers. An ancient method of incubating a prophetic dream was to sleep in a pig-sty. Although it seems humorous today because pigs are now commonly perceived as silly, lazy, useless, slovenly creatures, this method was once taken very seriously and is common to German, Italian, Romanian, Romany, Scandinavian, and Slavic traditions.
The one requirement is that the pen must contain at least one sow with her young.
It was once a German custom to nap in the sty on either Christmas Day or the day of the solstice to obtain lucky dreams and good fortune.
In Italian tradition, the ritual may be accompanied by invocations to St Anthony for maximum effectiveness.
White sows have particularly powerful lunar associations. The porcine profile can change dramatically—expanding and slimming down—in response to diet, pregnancy, and birth. This rhythmic shape-shifting was perceived as similar to that of the moon. Black sows are particularly identified with witchcraft. Black pigs, particularly small, fast ones, were often understood to be transformed witches engaged in spell-casting missions. Witch-hunters accused witches of offering black pigs to Satan.
See also Bears, Snakes, Transformation; BOTANICALS: Amanita Muscaria or Fly Agaric; CALENDAR: Yule; ERGOT; DIVINE WITCH: Artemis; Baba Yaga; Cerridwen; Circe; Freya; Hecate; Isis; Set; HAG; HORNED ONE: Chimneysweep.
